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1 Document 
mxH Congress ) SENATE \ No. 546 
1st Session S 


1 
1 

ADDRESS 

OF 

PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 

1 



ACCEPTING THE LINCOLN HOMESTEAD 
AT HODGENVILLE, KENTUCKY 



PRESENTED TO THE GOVERNMENT 
by the LINCOLN FARM ASSOCIATION 



^ 



SEPTEMBER 4, 1916 




PRESENTED BY MR. FLETCHER 
SEPTEMBER 7, 1910. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINCJTON 

GOVERNMKNT I'RINTlNc; Ol'l'lCE 

1916 



.32 • 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 
ACCEPTING THE LINCOLN HOMESTEAD. 



No more significant memorial could have been presented to the 
nation than this. It expresses so much of what is singular and 
noteworthy in the history of the country ; it suggests so many of the 
things that we prize most highly in our life and in our system of 
government. How eloquent this little house within this shrine is 
of the vigor of democracy ! There is nowhere in the land any home 
SQ remote, so humble, that it may not contain the power of mind and 
heart and conscience to which nations yield and history submits its 
processes. Nature pays no tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no 
creed of caste, renders fealty to no monarch or master of any name 
or kind. Genius is no snob. It does not run after titles or seek by 
preference the high circles of society. It affects humble company 
as well as great. It pays no special tribute to universities or learned 
societies or conventional standards of greatness, but serenely chooses 
its own comrades, its own haunts, its own cradle even, and its own 
life of adventure and of training. Here is proof of it. This little 
hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of singular, 
delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upcai the great stage 
of the nation's history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and 
majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably the central figure 
of the great plot. No man can explain this, but every man can see 
how it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is 
open, in every hamlet and countryside, in city and wilderness alike, 
for the ruler to emerge when he will and claim his leadership in the 
free life. Such are the authentic proofs of the validity and vitality 
of democracj''. 

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democracy. Who shall guess 
ihis secret of nature and providence and a free polity? Whatever 
the vigor and vitality of the stock from which he sprang, its mere 
\igor and soundness do not explain where this man got his great 
heart that seemed to comprehend all mankind in its catholic and 
benignant sympathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind those 
brooding, melancholy eyes, Avhose Aision swept many an horizon 
which those about him dreamed not of, — that mind that comjn-c- 
hended what it had never seen, and understood the language of 
affairs with the ready ease of one to the manner born, — or that 
nature which seemed in its varied richness to be the familiar of men 
of every way of life. This is the sacred mystery of democracy, that 
its richest fruits spring up out of soils which no man has prepared 

3 



4 ADDEESS OF PEESIDENT WILSON ACCEPTING LINCOLN HOMESTEAD. 

and in circumstances amidst which they are the least expected. This 
is a phice alike of mystery and of reassurance. 

It is likely that in a society ordered otherwise than our own Lin- 
coln could not have found himself or the path of fame and power 
upon Avhich he walked serenely to his death. In this place it is 
riglit that we should remind ourselves of the solid and striking facts 
upon Avhich our faith in democracy is founded. Many another man 
besides Lincoln has served the nation in its highest places of counsel 
and of action whose origins were as humble as his. Though the 
greatest example of the universal energy, richness, stimulation, and 
force, of democracy, he is only one example among many. The per- 
meating and all-pervasive virtue of the freedom which challenges us 
in America to make the most of every gift and power we possess 
every page of our history serves to emphasize and illustrate. Stand- 
ing here in this i)lace, it seems almost the whole of the stirring story. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here the end and consununation 
of that great life seem remote and a bit incredible. And yet there 
was no break anywhere between beginning and end, no lack of nat- 
ural sequence anywhere. Nothing really incredible happened. Lin- 
coln was unaffectedly as much at home in the AVhite House as he 
was here. Do you share with me the feeling, I wonder, that he was 
permanently at home nowhere? It seems to me that in the case of 
a man,— I would rather say of a spirit,— like Lincoln the (juestion 
where he was is of little significance, th.at it is always what he was 
that really arrests our thought and takes hold of our imagination. 
It is the spirit always that is sovereign. Lincoln, like the rest of us, 
was put through the discipline of the world,— a very rough and 
exacting discipline for him, an indispensable discipline for every 
man who would know what he is about in the midst of the world's 
affairs; but his spirit got only its schooling there. It did not derive 
its character or its vision from the expei-iences w hich brouglit it to its 
full revelation. The test of every American must always be, not 
where he is, but what he is. That, also, is of the essence of democ- 
racy, and is the moral of which this place is most gravely expressive. 
We would like to thhdv of men like Lincoln and Washington as 
typical Americans, but no man can be typical Avho is so unusual as 
these great men were. It was typical of American life that it should 
produce such men with supreme indifference as to the manner in 
which it produced them, and as readily here in this hut as amidst the 
little circle of cultivated gentlemen to whom Virginia owed so much 
in leadership and example. And Lincoln and Washington were 
typical Americans in the use they made of their genius. But there 
will be few such men at best, and we will not look into the mystery 
of how and why they come. We will only keep the door open for 
them always, and a hearty welcome,— after we have recognized them. 



ADDEESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON ACCEPTING LINCOLN HOMESTEAD. 5 

I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have sought out with 
the greatest interest the many intimate stories that are told of 
him, the narratives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, 
in which those who had the privilege of being associated with him 
have tried to depict for us the very man himself " in his habit as he 
lived;" but I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln's. I 
nowhere get the impression in any narrative or reminiscence that the 
writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of his mystery, or tluit any 
man coidd penetrate to the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no 
real fa mi I ia is. I get the impression that it never spolce out in com- 
plete self-revelation, and that it could not reveal itself completely 
to anyone. It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from under- 
neath those shaggy browns and comprehended men without fully com- 
muning with them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comrade- 
ship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. 
There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience 
of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as 
well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That 
privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit 
for the right perhaps no man can assist. This strange child of the 
cabin kept company with invisible things, was born into no intimacy 
but that of its own silently assembling and deploying thoughts. 

I have come here today, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he 
stands in need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of 
this gift to the nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this 
an altar upon which we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of 
democracy as upon a shrine at which some of the deepest and most 
sacred hopes of mankind may froui age to age be rekindled? For 
these hopes must constantly be rekindled, and only those who live 
can rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain the life-giving heat 
is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of maukind cannot be 
kept alive by woi-ds merely, by constitutions and doctrines of right 
and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to transmute these 
into the life and action of society, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of 
heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of 
right and service and enlightened purpose. The commands of 
democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are 
wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us. It will be great and 
lift a great light for the guidance of the nations only if we are great 
and carry that light high for the guidance of our own feet. We 
are not worthy to stand here unless we ourselves be in deed and in 
truth real democrats and servants of mankind, ready to give our very 
lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual exaltation of the great 
nation which shelters and nurtures us. 

o 



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